Businesses and industry continue to require and consume increased amounts of electric power. One reflection of this trend is growing interest in self-generation of electric power, either to replace or to supplement that delivered by load-serving entities and utilities over the existing electric power distribution grid. The employment of small-scale power generation capability at a local commercial or industrial facility has become known as distributed generation (DG).
Most owners and operators of DG systems lack sophisticated controls and functional software to optimize the performance of their systems. This usually results in under-utilization of DG assets and unfavorable economics for DG projects. In addition, most end-users of electric power do not want to become experts in microgeneration. While the number of DG assets increases, much of these sit idle, and owners lack the capability to access wholesale power markets or sell this excess generation capacity back to the electric power distribution grid.